The Turmoil of Love
by Pile of Manga
Summary: Sequel to Kiseki: 'Ai shiteru... Seto.' No way was Seto Kaiba going to let that be the last of it. He was going to find her again. But when he does, will the past repeat itself and destroy what little they had already?
1. The Search

-shuffles in- Um, ok, so I was extremely lazy. I want to say right here and now that I am greatful to everyone who kept badgering me with PMs and emails asking me why I haven't posted yet . I got a big urge today and sat down and wrote the first chapter to the sequel I promised about ten months ago, haha. Is the submission thing being weird for anyone else? The only way I could get this to upload was by putting it into oldschool NotePad! Microsoft Word and WordPad yielded nothing. Oh well. It doesn't take too much effort; I just need to go back in manually and do the itallics and boldness again. I'm hoping I can continue on with this relatively on schedule; however finals are coming up (I'm in college now!) and I'll be studying a lot. We'll see. I love you all! Hope you're not too mad at me for not posting sooner! ... well, I hope more that you'll like the sequel, but we shall see. Enjoy!

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_From the last chapter of Kiseki... _

_"Aishiteru… Seto."_

Those words… those horrendous words. They left Seto Kaiba with nothing. He wondered how the hell she thought that would be a good parting gift, because all it did was make him more pissed off that she wasn't there. As he sat in his room at his desk, he repeated the words to himself incredulously. She was gone; she's gone forever.

It had now been three months since she had left. Yet he was still thinking of her, like she had left yesterday. Mokuba had gotten fed up with him weeks ago and actually made some friends to have ice cream with every night. Why couldn't he move on? He had work to do!

"Kiseki…" he murmured her name to himself for the thousandth time. It means "miracle"... some hellish miracle _she_ was. He slammed his fist upon the table. He had to stop this. Something had to be done to take care of the turmoil within his ice-cold barriers. Thinking about her didn't work, nor did the opposite, as his mind would scream "Don't think about her" and he'd picture her in his mind. If not being able to see her was hell either way… then… He clenched his fists, biting his lip.

That was it. It was so simple, but... He shut his eyes and thought of the girl that had turned his world upside down and thrown it away. Could he really...? A few seconds' more thought and he made up his mind with a pounding heart. As he stood up and walked over to his closet, he pulled out a suitcase.

_"Aishiteru, Seto…"_ No way in hell was he going to let that be the last of it.

* * *

**_The Turmoil of Love_**

Seto did not actually end up leaving until after Christmas.

When he decided to pack his bags, he nearly hit himself for not thinking harder about his rash decision. Not only did he not know where she lived, but the geography of the United States was completely foreign to him. The only thing he knew was the fact that there were a lot of states or provinces or some irrational divisions like that. The address she had left on the back of the painting was where she was living in Japan; he suspected even she didn't know where she was going to end up.

The painting had been framed and put up in his office after about a month; he couldn't decide between that and his bedroom for a while, but ultimately figured out that it fit better in the KC building, Kiseki's idol. Work had slowed down a little bit, so he was able to go home earlier and use his laptop to search for her, but it was proving difficult. He thought that "Akai" would be a really easy name to find, considering it was Japanese and therefore rare in an English country, but he forgot the US was a melting pot. The Akais that did show up did not have Takai or Korosu as first names, so it was a dead end.

He was able to find out what company Mr. Akai had been working for, however. He had pressed the landlord for any information about the family, and after a little bribe, he was able to get a little bit out of him. The name was Wabash and Gregg, a company that took care of insurance claims, mainly for small businesses. This was how far he had managed to get in between school, work, and his own thoughts.

Sometimes Kiseki wasn't even on his mind once he had it set on a stepping stone to find her.

Tonight he was taking a look again at the company's website. There was a small section about their foreign department, but only two employees were listed as the main travelers on the main page: Brad Hoffman and Garrett Messinger. There was no place to search the employee list, so that left him no choice but to hack the files. He made it into the manager's list, but still couldn't find any sign of Akai anywhere.

_Maybe he was fired…?_ Seto thought for a moment. _Or maybe he left the company after the accident. Even if he was on leave, he should be back on his feet by now, and they wouldn't just kick him off unless he left._

He folded his hands in his lap and pondered, panic briefly flitting through his stomach. There was something he was overlooking, he knew it. He got up to get himself some food to give him some time to think about it. If Korosu Akai had left the company, there was very little hope that he could find Kiseki. The best he could hope for would be to wait until she turned 18, then to look her up as a legal citizen. He hoped he wouldn't have to wait that long.

With a heavy sigh, he sank into his leather seat again in front of his computer. His blue eyes stared blankly at the monitor, and he ran a hand through his brown hair. _I might as well search all the names manually; I don't know what else to do._ The thought of doing this made him groan, but if this tedious task would lead him to the girl he loved, he would do it for days if he had to.

He figured the first place to start would be the foreign department. Looking at the list of employees, he saw a few non English names, but none came even close to Japanese. His search continued for an hour or two before he decided it would be best he went to bed empty-handed.

The next few weeks produced no more information, and Seto was reaching the end of his patience. He climbed into bed again and laid on his back with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. Mind wandering, he didn't think he could look at another name without throwing up. That and he still felt as if there was something big he wasn't thinking about. He decided to focus on what that might be, since everything else he'd thought of yielded nothing useful.

Obviously, there was always the possibility that Mr. Akai had left the company, and he couldn't do anything about that. However, companies usually keep records of past employees, and he couldn't find his name in the previous employee files, so if he did leave, they might have lost his file. However, it made him suspicious, and made it more likely that Akai was still with them somehow.

Akai… The name was definitely Japanese. He could try looking them up in the Japanese directory, but that would take an extremely long time, and he seriously doubted that they would have someone listed if they were only there a week. He had never seen Kiseki's parents in person, so he couldn't simply look at the profile pictures of the employees and do a facial recognition…

Seto's teeth began to grind slightly; his hopes were slowly slipping away. He knew so little that he felt like giving up right then and there. The name Akai Kiseki would simply remain in his mind forever and burn a hole into it.

_Akai Kiseki._ Seto rolled over. He wondered vaguely how someone could have such a beautiful Japanese name and not even be Japanese. _Wait a minute…why_ _**would**_ _someone have a fully Japanese name if she weren't Japanese?_

Kaiba sat up suddenly. _Of course._

Throwing his bed sheets off, he turned his computer back on, tapping his fingers quickly on the desk as it whirred to life. Hacking back into Wabash and Gregg, his fingers typed so fast that he kept missing keys; he hoped beyond all reason that his sudden thought would be what he was looking for. He took another look at the foreign affairs list of employees. He had to look at their profiles separately, so he started with Brad Hoffman. It showed a list of all his assignments; Seto's eyes darted from side to side as he went further back to May of that year. Seto saw the beginning of the best piece of news he had seen in a long while: **DOMINO, JAPAN**.

The date on the trip was May 18 through July 24, and his heart sank slightly. Kiseki's family had only been there for a week in May. Her birthday was May 14, one day before she had been cruelly taken away from him. He tried to slow his heartbeat as he clicked on the next employee, Garrett Messinger. Seto's eyes went wide.

**DOMINO, JAPAN.** May 7—May 15. _Business transaction terminated due to back injury during assignment._

Garrett Messinger certainly didn't sound anything like Korosu Akai, but that description sure did. It had the man's address, home telephone number, and address on it, and Seto copied and pasted it into a word file. If his hunch was correct, the family had been using an alias.

He was sure he'd found them. He'd found... her.


	2. The Journey

Chapter 2 came a little faster than I'd have expected it to... but then again not much happens in this one, either! Just hang in with me until he gets there, then things'll get going. -evil cackle- I forget whether we're allowed to respond to reviews in our chapters; I'll check that. Well, I suppose if we're not, I'll start PMing the lot of you to respond. Mwahaha.

**Kikoken--**I was so honored to have you give the first review! I still love your stories and respect you very much as an author. Thank you very much for the kisses! I hope you enjoy this story : )

**twilight eyes 8120--**Thank you for that lovely review! It made me blush a lot... I hope this was quick enough to your fancy? I will try my darndest to make this more heart-wrenching than the first! This is, after all, a sequel, and sequels are notorious for falling flat on their metaphorical faces!

**Chaos Tears--**Calm down, there, haha. And it WAS forever. I finished Kiseki probably at least a year ago, right? I promised a sequel ten months ago! You've been waiting a very long time. I'm sorry!!

**AllisonWalker--**I completely agree with you on that. I'll admit, I had to go back and reread my own story before writing this one, and Seto came off as OOC once he realized he loved Kiseki. I'm going to keep that in check in this story, I promise. It will be easy with what I have planned, anyway, haha. But, then again, Seto falling in love is in itself OOC, isn't it?

**White Alchemist Taya--**Yay! I'm glad : ) I hope you'll continue reading! Enjoy!

Anyway, this chapter actually ended up with a lot of symbolism, something I totally suck at--both in writing and in finding it in other stories, haha. See if you can pick it out if you are bored enough to watch for it! Onwards!

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**Chapter 2**

After a few more days' searching, he found that Garrett Messinger was at least living with one Molly Messinger, so they were either siblings (Seto highly doubted this), or they were married. He decided to take his chances.

It took him about a week after that to set up his company for his vacation; since he had never formally taken one before, hardly anyone knew what to do when he announced he'd be away on business for an uncertain amount of time. He nominated the vice president in charge and gave him his cell phone number in case anything went wrong. He felt confident enough to leave it to someone else because of the after Christmas doldrums.

All was packed, and he was on his way to America.

An eleven hour flight would take him to Oregon, on the west coast, and from there to Colorado in two hours. His laptop provided sufficient entertainment while he did spreadsheets for general business; he had others that did this, of course, but the fact that he couldn't connect to the internet prevented him from doing anything else. It only lasted for three hours before he shut it and put it away, folding his hands.

They got some rather fishy-looking sushi; he slightly prodded it before deciding it would do. He never liked airline food, but he figured that he wouldn't risk such a long time to go without anything to eat. Afterwards, he started glancing around his seat, trying to find something to entertain himself. He had over six hours to go anyway. He found that the armrest had a tiny videogame-like controller built in. It looked so simple that he didn't want to even try what stupid games they had on the tv in front of him. He replaced it and tried not to look at the Japanese soap opera the woman next to him was watching; it was hard to ignore with her trying not to cry too loudly. The flight attendants then told him to pull the window shades shut, as it was time for everyone to get some rest.

He leaned back his head, annoyed at how long the flight was taking. He was in the business class, so he could ask for anything at any time, however he didn't want to eat anymore. All he wanted to do was keep his mind busy.

As the woman next to him continued to let silent tears roll down her cheeks, he'd bristle every time she sniffed quietly, becoming annoyed. When the show did finally end, she took out the earphones, wiped her eyes, and went to sleep. After a few minutes, he half-wished something would happen to distract him, because his mind began to drift to what he was actually about to do.

It had been over six months since he had seen Kiseki; he dared not ask whether she would remember him. Of course she would. Perhaps not the last part of their meeting as well as when he tormented her for the dueling card she held. He knew he still loved her, but part of him said it was slightly less than when they had last seen each other; this almost gave way to the hope that not only would she would turn him away, but he would not feel the same feelings for her when he arrived at her house.

He shook his head. That wasn't the way to be thinking when he had spent at least 140,000 yen just to fly there and back. Such a waste of money. Closing his eyes, he felt his teeth clench in frustration. This is exactly what he didn't want to be doing—second-guessing himself.

He decided to think about why the Messingers needed aliases in Japan. Japan was certainly much safer than the US; there was crime, certainly, but at least it didn't have a notorious rumor about the fact that everyone walks around with a handgun. Perhaps it had something to do with what the company did.

Wabash and Gregg was a small law firm that fought for small businesses… probably protecting them from bigger businesses trying to take over? That could mean that W&G got involved with people much higher above them, and therefore made it dangerous for the people working for them… Most law firms don't use aliases; wouldn't that make the small businesses distrust them somehow?

His thoughts were interrupted when a young girl in front of him sat up. "Mommy! The map says we're flying over Alaska! Can I look, mommy?"

"Sure, sweetie," murmured the mother, obviously half-asleep and not aware of what the child had asked.

The girl yanked up her window shade and blinded the still-awake people around her as the blank, white Alaskan landscape burned through the glass. She gasped and pressed her nose against the window and looked down at the mountains covered in glistening snow. Trying to shut his eyes against the light, Seto suddenly realized he had a pounding headache. He angrily jabbed the waitress button on his armrest, and she appeared politely 15 seconds later.

"Do you have any Aspirin?" he asked her. She nodded.

"I'll be right back with it, sir."

"And—" he pointed impatiently at the back of the girl's chair.

The stewardess looked over, smiled broadly at the child, and nodded at Kaiba. "Honey," she said sweetly. The girl turned around. "The man behind you is trying to get some rest; could you take one last look at Alaska and then put the shade back down?"

"Aww…" she mumbled. When the woman had gone to get Seto's Aspirin, the girl unbuckled her seatbelt and turned around in her seat to look over the top at Seto. "You grumpy old man; I was just looking out the window."

Seto chose not to respond, intent on glaring at his shut window with his chin on his hand. The girl pouted, stuck her tongue out, and said "Well, you're ugly" before flopping down again.

He took a deep breath to keep from blowing a fuse, closing his eyes once again against the pain throbbing behind them. The stewardess came back with the medicine and a glass of water. He drank the pills down and laid back, rubbing his forehead. The little girl worsened his mood considerably. What had he been thinking?

Wabash and Gregg… right. Not wanting to think too hard about something that arbitrary, he simply dismissed the why's of the company and tried to clear his throbbing head. They used aliases, so what.

After a rather short amount of time, he felt sleep overtaking him, and as he settled in a little more into his chair, one last thought struggled out of the tired mess of his mind.

_I wonder if "Kiseki" was an alias, too…_


End file.
